I had an interesting series of phone conversations recently connected to an Interim role as Digital Director at Overseas Property Centres. Essentially I was cold-called by a sales person trying to "sell me a position on page one of Google". It was a total scam of the boiler-room type.
To avoid aggravation, I won't say who they worked for (but I might if you call!) I will say that it was a fairly well-known Google Adwords reseller.
Here is how it went;
A sales person calls me offering a "guaranteed page 1 position of 4 or higher on Google for one year" for £1000 "if I move quickly". He doesn't ask me anything about SEO or existing PPC campaigns. When I ask him what keyword he is talking about he explains that it's for just one 3 word keyword phrase.
Ooh, I say. Can I have these other terms as well? I mention 3 others and the price goes up to £3000 for a year.
He reliably informs me that these terms are typed in hundreds of thousands of times a month and that the volume of leads we get from them will be enormous.
I ask him how he knows this - "private Google data that only we have". Mmm.. (wow they have access to the Google API!) I explain that its a lot of money and I will think about it.
So, how can they offer this?
Well, they do some research. First of all, they have a good idea on what they will have to bid to keep a TextAd at position 4 or better - and they know exactly how many times that term is really typed in.
They also know the difference between Broad, Phrase and Exact matching and probably assume that I don't.
They calculate that the cost of keeping the TextAd at 4 or better for an exact match will be tiny compared to the money I pay.
I then (feigning ignorance) continued to ask about keyword volumes and eventually 'found' the public Google keyword tool. Using this I discovered that for the 4 keyword phrases the broad match is only hundreds a month and the exact match just dozens!
I put this to the sales guy (who by then is using a number of standard boiler room techniques like 'the angry boss' and 'I am doing you a favour'). He tells me that the Google keyword tool is just for the public and that they have access to much more professional tools which tell "the real story".
I continue to show interest but explain that I need some evidence. So he goes away to get it. Of course he can't, so he calls back and drops the price to £1500 (from £3000). I say no. He then asks me to name my price.. literally anything.
I do some basic sums and offer him what it's actually worth. £67.50!
Needless to say he rings off and doesn't bother me again!
The beauty (if that's the right word) of this scam is that, if you take their word for it, they can easily sell you something that seems to be above board and very visible. Every time you type in the purchased keywords there you are - up the top of Google!
What a lot of people don't realise is that proper PPC campaigns involve bidding on 1000's and even 10's of thousands of keywords. And should only ever be entered into after you have spent some time understanding what keywords are relevant to the content of your site, what keywords are being used (and how often) and being certain that your site actually converts visits into sales or enquiries.
If you are tempted to enter into PPC agreements with dodgy cold-callers, then please call Chilli Digital first! We have a realistic sales-driven approach to Online marketing and will help you with pay-per-click advertising as well as other proven techniques like email marketing and Search engine optimisation.
Article by Jake Holloway
